All of a sudden it takes a while (a second or two) to save changes to my Win7 box's host file. It used to be instantaneous. I've tried editing it with gVim and Notepad++. Saving a file with identical contents in the same folder is instant. Any ideas as to what's going on? I did just recently install a large Windows update... I also tried the old reboot ;-)

Interesting--I didn't consider that. We did just make some changes to our virus scanner. I'll have to look into it.
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AlexMAAug 16 '13 at 14:09

Put the hosts file on the exclusion list (temporarily) to see if it makes a difference.
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TonnyAug 16 '13 at 15:06

Well, all of a sudden saves are fast again (checked before I added the file to the exclusions list). Unfortunately am not sure how to reproduce the scenario, but if it starts happening again I will immediately try excluding the file and test this hypothesis. I have a hunch you're right though but the scanner is done working or something.
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AlexMAAug 16 '13 at 15:25